TABs & PWDs

For those of you who aren't familiar w/disability slang/abbreviations, my title stands for Temporally Able Bodied People & People w/Disabilities. Why temporally? Because eventually everybody gets diabetes or cancer or hit by a bus. Eventually everybody will become a crip. It's a fact of life. Although if you've ever seen the documentary Including Samuel, 'people just call it old,' but a crip is a crip.

On Sunday it started to snow. I wasn't sure it was really going to snow b/c it started later then the internet said, but we were supposed to get 7in (we got significant snow, but not 7in). Once it started I went "Oh CRAP!" I haven't gone food shopping since the second week of school b/c I only go food shopping when I need to do my prescription refills and I put that off way too long. If we had gotten 7in of snow I would have been held captive. I'm not walking across campus to get something to eat and my chair can't tackle that kind of snow fall. When the bottom gets wet it shorts and I have to wait til it dries out for it to start again (learned that the hard way). What was I to do? ORDER CHINESE!

So I went out to the lobby where all the take out menus are stored and grabbed the one I prefer. I had to order quick before the snow started to stick. My mother trained me well. Delivery guys do not go out in the snow. What if they got in an accident because of me? How awful would that be? Anyway, I ordered more chinese then I could eat in one meal, in case I really got stranded and decided to sit in the lobby and wait for it.

I don't have a TV in my room and there is a big screen in the lobby. I flipped the channels. P.S. I Love You was on some movie channel. Never saw it but wanted to. About the time I put it on some freshman girls walked into the building and saw it on. One of them had seen it and the other hadn't. They went and dumped their crap off and then came back down to watch it. A little while later their friend (a guy) came over and sat down as well as the RA that was supposed to be on duty (also a guy) at the front desk. The RAs often watch TV on duty b/c you can still see the door from that side of the lobby and that's all they're supposed to be doing--watching the door.

At this point you're probably wondering what this all has to do w/TABs & PWDs. Well I'll tell you. The movie was long and the guy and this one girl asked if they could switch it to Flight of the Conchords at 10. The movie ended in time. I said I'd never heard of it, what was it? Well it's a sketch comedy show & it was weird. As soon as they said that I went "OMG I totally forgot How's Your News? Is on at 10:30. Can we switch it to that after? I missed the last 2 weeks" Sure, but what's that? (see, the connection)

So at 10:30 we switched to How's Your News? I was more then a bit worried in that I was watching the show w/a bunch of TABs I don't know all that well & I was unsure of what their reaction would be, but I wanted to see it so bad I took the risk. Thinking back now for all I know one of them could have a sister w/down syndrome and the other a brother w/autism. Who knows.

[image description: the How's Your News? Logo]

I am very happy to report that the screening went well. They laughed in all the right places (not ROFLMAO type laughing, I mean the show is funny but not that funny) and genuinely seemed to enjoy it. The RA even made a comment that it was pretty funny and wanted to know more about it. YES!!!!! Score one for our team. Even if they never watch another episode again, they still sat down for a half hour one snowy Sunday night and laughed at a bunch of crips making fools of themselves on purpose. Breaking down barriers a few TABs at a time... and all because I was waiting on an order of chinese food...

**What I heard is that the show was only picked up for a six episode series. The How's Your News? folks are asking people to "...take a trip over to mtv.com and let them know how you feel about How’s Your News? We have no idea whether or not we’ll get the chance to make another season of this show, but we do know that feedback from people like you does make a difference in the decision making process. Even if all you do is watch a past episode on the mtv site, that helps us because it let’s them know that people are interested in seeing shows like this on television. Go ahead, make a difference!"**